Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, Jr. (born September 22, 1941) is Pastor Emeritus and the former Pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), a megachurch in Chicago with around 8,500 members. In early 2008, Wright retired after 36 years as the Senior Pastor of his congregation and no longer has daily responsibilities at the church. Following retirement, Wright's beliefs and manner of preaching were scrutinized when segments from his sermons were publicized in connection with the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Obama addressed the issues raised by the Wright controversy in his speech entitled "A More Perfect Union". To explain more fully his actual positions on these issues, Wright gave a speech before the NAACP on April 27, 2008, in which he stressed that he was not "divisive", but "descriptive", and that the black church experience, like black culture, was "different" but not "deficient". Wright voted for Obama in the 2008 election, despite the controversy.